


Insomnia

by katiebuttercup



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Did I mention angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Sherlock is trying, Sherlock is working on like ten hours sleep in a few days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 00:05:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14659059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katiebuttercup/pseuds/katiebuttercup
Summary: Sherlock struggles with his demons





	Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> Kindly beta read by stlgeekgirl who has the patience of a saint and has somehow molded this into something that makes sense as it began life as a hodge potch of tumblr messages

Disclaimer:characters belong to Moffat  


He’d always jealously guarded his space. 

Living with John hadn’t been as much of a chore as he’d initially thought-the former soldier respected boundaries, their common area was a mish mash of them both but his room had always been *his*.  
Except of course when it wasn’t.  
He’d ceded his room to Janine out of necessity, he’d been high enough that the sting of it was simply white noise. 

But there was no case, no ending that could justify the sharing of his space except that he wanted Molly, wanted her to be as comfortable in his home as he had become accustomed to hers.  
But it was difficult, much more than he had predicted. 

He didn’t mind Molly staying in his bed after sex, even he knew asking her to leave was beyond the pale, and the sated lethargy made it easy for him to acquiesce to Molly falling asleep next to him. 

But on nights like this, nights where they simply fall asleep together after eating Chinese and watching crime shows, each trying to figure out whodunnit before the other it was suddenly very difficult  
She’s fast asleep beside him, pajamas plain and serviceable and not at all enticing and yet the sight of her makes something almost painful bloom in his chest. 

Want and desire are things he can control, sex is something to indulge in and then cast off  
It’s not like a bed is even his favourite place to have sex, it means something else-a safe place, the end of the case when he can let all the tension ebb away.  
When his mind can empty, and he is safe. 

Molly in his bed feels like sandpaper over newly barely healed skin 

There’s nowhere to go in a bed with another person, even one as tiny as Molly, she’s there, and even though her presence is soothing and welcome nearly everywhere else here he feels suffocated. 

His body is aware of her, and not in the normal pleasurable way, his mind screaming that someone is here, an outsider, someone he can’t control. He’s a man that needs a certain amount of control he’s learned. 

But he doesn’t have the words to explain that to Molly without hurting her, without her thinking he doesn’t love her (and he does, so much, so deeply) but he needs this space.  
He rolls onto his side, staring at the soft curve of Molly’s spine and imagines pressing against her, curving his body around hers. He has no problem doing it during sex and yet now he is paralyzed. 

He knows how Molly feels against him, under him, on top of him, but he doesn’t know how she feels curled up on his chest, head resting over his heart-he’d seen Mary and John sleeping on the couch after cases in such a manner. 

He’d snorted with derision at them. But now the desire to feel Molly against him is almost overwhelming. He flexes his fingers, hovering over Molly’s hip. He could rest his hand there, press his chest to her back and tuck her head under his chin. He could do that. His fingers tremble, body and mind warring against each other. 

He retracts his hand and snarls at the ceiling as he flops onto his back, angry at himself.  
His deficiencies at human interaction had never plagued him as much. He blames John for unlocking a door he’d guarded his whole life, kicking it down and then introducing Molly and Mary and Rosie and Greg and suddenly Sherlock cares. 

Cares and wants to do better. 

He falls asleep still wrestling his demons. 

 

He wakes a few hours later, it’s still dark. He can’t think why he woke until he turns his head and sees the empty space where Molly had been safely sleeping. 

 

Where is she? 

Panic makes him clumsy, he fights with his sheets until he untangles his limbs as he clambers out of bed. 

He lurches towards the door, fear churning in his gut, her absence flipping every panic button he owns. He makes it to the living room, stumbling like a drunk man, too panicked to deduce until his heart settles back into place. 

Molly is sleeping on the sofa, huddled under the blanket everyone uses when they stop over. 

She knew. 

Everything inside Sherlock aches, somehow, she’d known the turmoil inside of him and she’d removed herself from the situation because she always knew what he needed. 

He eats the distance between them and collapses beside her, exhausted and heart sick.  
He could let her sleep, he could take her unspoken gift and go back to bed and sleep.  
Instead he pokes her between the ribs, where he knows she is especially ticklish. 

She bats him away still asleep, but he prods her again  
“Molly!”  
He sounds gruff and impatient, but he can’t let this go on a second more. 

Molly opens her eyes slowly, “Sherlock?” She sits up, reaching for him, “Did you have a nightmare again?”  
“Yes,” 

Molly’s face softens, reaching for him but he evades her, taking her hands instead.  
“I woke up and you were gone,” Sherlock says.  
Molly’s face twists, “Sherlock...I know okay? I know that you don’t like sleeping next to me,”  
“I don’t,” he says agreeably, “but you are the only person I want to try for,” 

Molly puts her hands on his shoulders and meets his eyes unflinchingly  
“You don’t have to! That’s what I’m telling you, I’m not asking you to change,” 

“You should,” Sherlock counters, “I take and I take, first your affections and then your skills as a pathologist and then I invade your home, make it my bolt hole and pretend I don’t know what it did to you-I mean in the beginning I didn’t understand-not really-“ 

Molly makes a shushing noise, but Sherlock ignores her, he’d never understand why Molly had babbled at him in the beginning, but he does now. 

“Sherlock!” Her voice is sharp, he shuts his mouth, obeying her command without being aware of it. 

He’s terrified he realizes, terrified that one day he’ll wake up and Molly will have left-not to the couch, but out of 221B and out of his life forever. 

And he won’t have done enough to keep her.  
How many more days will he waste? How many more words will be left unsaid if he lets his fear win? 

He laces his fingers through Molly’s, marvels at the ease in which he does so.  
He loves holding Molly’s hand, usually he tucks their hands into his pocket, ever wary of the press and...no. 

He’s scared 

Scared that the Sherlock Holmes, the facade will crumble,  
Scared that the Sherlock Holmes, the press loves will somehow seem weak, human  
Fallible. 

He’s not particularly proud of that, it borders too close to being ashamed of Molly  
And he’s not. 

Never that. 

But there’s a distinction between the Sherlock Holmes that John has created and the man kneeling beside the woman he loves. 

The Sherlock Holmes in the hat is infallible, a god, a thinking machine without a heart. 

Above and better than anyone else. 

The Sherlock in 221B tonight has too much heart and doesn’t know how to use it. It creaks and groans under pressure, a muscle atrophied through misuse. 

He’s scared that where Moriarty failed to burn the heart out of him he has done it to himself.

Because Molly deserves more, deserves to be loved in a way he fears he can never give her, can never be for her. 

He’s not boyfriend material, it’s a role he can play, but he’s reluctant to shed his armour-the thing that has protected him, he doesn’t know if he wants to be one of them. 

One of those fools jerked around by their emotions, what if loving Molly makes him sloppy? Makes him lose his edge? 

Makes him someone other than Sherlock Holmes consulting detective? 

John had gone mad in the suburbs in a month, what would happen to a mind like his if he lets Molly in too far? 

 

Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Mary arching an eyebrow in his direction, obviously unimpressed with his inner turmoil. 

‘You seemed happy enough at Rosie’s christening,’ Mary’s voice, warm in his ear even though it was an illusion. 

“If you’re so against domesticity maybe you don’t want to be Rosie’s godfather anymore?”

Sherlock clenches his jaw, the idea of never holding Rosie, her tiny body in her arms as he shows her his experiments. 

It hurts more than he can bare. 

Molly is stroking his fingers with hers, she’s real, warm and vibrant and he’s hers.  
The claustrophobia still scrabbles at his throat, he knows he won’t be cured tomorrow night, but the couch is too far away, he needs Molly, needs her strength and understanding,  
And… 

“Please come back to bed,” he says. 

“Sherlock,”It's a warning, a declaration of love and understanding.  
He stares at their intertwined fingers, he can be weak like this. With her. Only her.

“Please,” 

She’s hesitating, he can feel it in the way she holds her body, the tension in her hand, and then she gets up. 

Sherlock almost back tracks when they cross the threshold, almost wants to take it back, but Molly is turning down the covers and he knows it’s too late. 

Molly curls herself into a ball at the far side of the bed, an acre of clean white sheet between them.  
Sherlock feels bereft, it should make him feel better, but he feels like he’s scooped out his heart with a wooden spoon. 

He jumped off the roof of Bart’s and Molly caught him, she’ll catch him now. 

He rolls over, molding his body to hers, learning her body in a new way. It’s not precisely comfortable but it’s a start. He rests his hand on her hip the way he’d longed to. 

Molly is stiff in his arms, he presses a kiss to the top of her head, tries to speak to her with his body the same way their brains spoke to each other, effortlessly, seamlessly, instinctively.  
For a moment he fears she’ll reject him, reject his peace offering, be relentlessly noble and give him what he wants. 

But he needs Molly, needs to wake up with her hair in his mouth and their legs intertwined and morning breath. He needs it like his brain needs problems and deductions and stimulation. 

There’s a long pause before Molly says, “You should probably know I kick in my sleep,”  
The laugh that bubbles out of him is unbidden, loud in the quietness of his room. His smile stretches his facial muscles almost painfully.  
“Hmm,” He nuzzles his chin across the crown of her head, already half asleep.


End file.
